


unmarried and unchurched

by orphan_account



Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: F/M, pregnancy au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-23
Updated: 2017-05-23
Packaged: 2018-11-04 03:04:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 639
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10982028
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: If you were Betty Cooper, you would file this under reasons that the universe is obviously cruel, or possibly under Cute Things. If you were Jughead Jones, it would be filed under How I became my father and Betty became better than her mother or  reasons why Betty Cooper is too good for me.





	unmarried and unchurched

Betty smiles at him and he feels like his bones are collapsing, falling in on themselves. Her hand on his shoulder. Jesus, she's glowing.   
"Yeah?" His voice comes out dry and nervous. He's never sounded more teenage. Never more unready for this than now.  
"Yeah. I've got to continue the Cooper family tradition."  
(Her smile starts to look a bit strained there; Jughead feels like he shouldn't have said it. He didn't say anything. God.)  
He hugs her, then. "I support you, Betts. I think I always will."  
(She cries into his shoulder until both of them fall asleep on her bed. Alice Cooper's mouth flatlines when she sees them there together, but they're both unconscious, and so she allows herself to smile and pull Betty's quilt over the two of them. And then she pries their hands apart. You can't blame her; she never claimed to be kind.)  
...  
Betty is wearing one of Polly's old dresses, and she looks radiant. These days, her emotions are huge, gale-force things. She's mostly happy, now, with Jug's hand in hers and Polly and Veronica at her side and Alice mostly approving of it all, half-smiling down on all of them like a benevolent god. But it’s mostly Jones’ hand on her waist and him grinning at her when she says she can feel the baby kicking and thinking - no, knowing - that he’ll be a wonderful father, that he’ll be so much better than Hal that it’s almost a cruel comparison, that the child will think about their father and feel the same love that Betty feels for it, the all-encompassing certainty that (not to be sappy. Oh, what’s the point, it’s too late anyway) fills her bones late at night when she looks over and sees Jug there, knowing that someone cannot be replaced. And she’s crying again. It’s mostly happy this time, or fully happy if Betty doesn’t admit that she’ll be jealous of her own child, who will grow up like she never did.  
…  
“Labor sucks, Betty. It’s worth it, though,” Polly says, smiling. She holds up a onesie with little faded once-yellow ducks on it for Betty’s inspection.   
“Cute,” Betty murmurs. It’s almost surreal to see the clothing; she really is just like Polly, deep down. Polly puts a hand on her knee and asks her if she’s worried about labor. (Polly hopes Betty is just worried about labor; they’ve been around each other too much to not know when something isn’t fully sincere.)   
Betty leans back and crosses her arms over her chest. “That’s one thing.” Goddamn, she really doesn’t want to cry in front of Polly. Especially not about the Cooper teen pregnancy curse. Polly might understand, might understand better than anyone else, but she’d be hurt.   
“Is it the I’m a teenager and my mom got pregnant right out of high school and my sister couldn’t even wait that long to have babies blues?” Polly lies down right next to her. “Because I get that. Though I only had mom to compare to.”   
Betty looks away and fights the temptation to say Maybe so. “Yes, Polly. It’s the Cooper curse blues.”   
Polly hugs her for a very long time. (Very gently. She doesn’t want to hurt Betty even a little.)  
...  
Jug is going to be trapped in this town forever, but sometimes Betty looks at him like she sees him - really sees him, like, she understands him better than he understands himself - and it’s worth it to stay, because he looks at her and he loves her.   
…  
(Probably more than he should. Girls like Betty Cooper are dime-a-dozen and not worth staying in Riverdale for, she thinks.)   
…  
Later, she tells him this and he looks up from little Alice and tells her that she's factually incorrect, but she’ll never believe him, not on that one.


End file.
